


Little Green

by jeeno2



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Families of Choice, Friendship, Infertility, Parenthood, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:05:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hi," Peeta says quietly; almost shyly. "I'm your daddy, and…" His voice cracks on the word daddy, and Katniss' heart clenches painfully inside her chest. </p><p>"I'm your daddy," Peeta continues. Stronger this time. "I've waited so very long to meet you." </p><p>A post-Mockingjay AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> My first Everlark update in about six months. But this plot bunny just wouldn't leave me alone. :) This will be a short, four or five-chapter story, including this prologue.
> 
> Thanks from the bottom of my heart to Sponsormusings, MalTease, and Salanderjade, without whose unending encouragement and support I wouldn't have had the courage to write this.
> 
> I hope you enjoy. And if you'd like to find me on tumblr where I blog about THG, Game of Thrones, and my naughty cats you can find me there as jeeno2.

Katniss Mellark is upstairs in the nursery, dust rag in hand, when the phone by the front door rings.

“I’ll get it, Katniss,” Peeta calls up from downstairs.

Katniss doesn’t spend much time in this room.  She only comes in here every once in a great while, really, to dust the aging furniture.  Given everything, she and Peeta agreed years ago to keep the door to this room closed and locked most of the time.

Peeta comes in here far more often than she does.  It’s not something they ever discuss but Katniss knows it’s true all the same.  Sometimes, when she wakes from a nightmare in the middle of the night, she’ll look over to Peeta’s side of the bed and he’ll be gone, the dim light coming from the end of the hallway providing the only clue as to his whereabouts. 

Sometimes, all alone in bed in the middle of the night, she’ll hear him singing quietly from the nursery.  Just silly little songs she vaguely remembers from her own childhood, in that terrible singing voice of his that’s no less sweet for its tonelessness.

Once she heard Peeta crying from this room.  Or at least she thinks he was crying.  But whatever it was, he was doing it so quietly she wasn’t quite certain it was real.

As Katniss dusts the tiny yellow dresser, the crib, the lamp with baby rabbits on its lampshade, Katniss looks up at the mobile Delly gave them eight years ago that still hangs, lifelessly, uselessly, from a hook suspended from the ceiling.  “I’m done having children,” Delly had told her that afternoon, a smugness in her tone she probably hadn’t intended.  She said she didn’t need the mobile anymore – this strange spinning toy with the cartoon sheep and the goats and the chickens that played sweet music and that had soothed each of Delly’s three children to sleep in turn. 

“Here,” Delly said to Katniss that day, handing the mobile to Katniss across the lunch table in a brown paper bag.  “Take it.  I know you’ll need it someday.”  She’d squeezed Katniss’ hand and gave her a sympathetic smile.

Delly’s words -- only meant to be encouraging, Katniss knows; only said out of kindness and from compassion -- had felt like a knife to Katniss' heart all the same.  She’d wanted, very badly, to tell Delly to go fuck herself the day she gave her this toy. 

But she didn’t.  “Thank you,” Katniss said instead, forcing herself to smile the way she used to smile for the Capitol’s cameras and taking the stupid mobile from Delly, thinking only of how grateful she was that Peeta hadn’t been here for this conversation.

Katniss wonders, as she does every time she comes into the nursery to dust, if they should just take the stupid thing down and give it away.  If perhaps they shouldn’t just give _all_ of these things away – the furniture, the toys, all of it – so that they can finally move past this one, final thing that Snow and the old Capitol took from them. 

She and Peeta have no need for any of these things.  They never will. 

Twelve is still the poorest of all the districts, even after everything Paylor’s new government has done for it.  Certainly there’s another family here that hasn’t had the financial good fortune that she and Peeta have had.  Certainly they could make use of these things. 

“Yes, I think so,” Katniss murmurs under her breath.  And this time she means it.  Better to do it now, she decides.  Right away.  Better to take these things down without thinking about it, without telling Peeta, who’ll just talk her out of it again like he always does and who’ll make her keep the mobile and everything else just as they are. 

Katniss walks to the crib with purpose, biting her bottom lip, refusing to cry.  She reaches up over the crib and grabs hold of the tiny smiling woolen sheep, giving him a squeeze as she prepares to take him and his little friends down for good.

Peeta bursts into the nursery a moment later, the force of his entry into the room slamming the door against the wall so hard the room shakes.

“Katniss,” he croaks.  She lets go of the mobile and spins on her heels to face him.  His face is white as a sheet, and his bright blue eyes are utterly desperate.  Wild.

Katniss panics.  “What is it?” she demands.  Is he having an episode?  It’s been years since the last one.

“That was District Eleven’s hospital,” he tells her.  Peeta leans against a brightly-colored wall for support and runs shaky hands through his hair. 

“Katniss.  Oh god, Katniss.  She’s here.”


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Sponsormusings, MalTease, and Salanderjade for their hugely helpful feedback as I wrote this chapter.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading. If you'd like to find me on tumblr, I'm there as jeeno2.

They haven’t been to Eleven since the Victory Tour sixteen years ago.

The circumstances bringing them here today are very different, of course.  And so’s the train.  Katniss and Peeta are riding a regular passenger train today, designed for speed, practicality, and day-to-day inter-district travel.  Not something created for the express purpose of parading Victors about the country.

To her credit, Paylor has no use for the ostentatious displays of wealth now synonymous with Snow’s brutal regime. There are no mahogany tables or gold-plated appetizer trays here.  Just rows of seats filled with ordinary travelers.  Families, most of them, but also businessmen in three-piece suits, farmers wearing denim overalls, and miners sooty with coal dust. 

But despite the many differences between today and that trip sixteen years ago, Katniss is still en route to Eleven with Peeta, a man who is not only her husband but also the co-Victor who travelled with her to Eleven on the Victory Tour.  As Twelve’s misty mountains slowly give way to flat farmland and trees laden with summer fruit Katniss is overwhelmed with a sickening feeling of déjà vu that threatens to taint what’s supposed to be a joyous day.

From the look on Peeta’s face Katniss guesses he feels it too.  The uncomfortable familiarity of all this.  When they cross over Twelve’s border with Eleven he pulls Katniss onto his lap, just like he used to do when they were first married, and buries his nose in her thick unbraided hair.

“The last time we were in Eleven we said goodbye to Rue,” Peeta murmurs into her ear, too quietly for the passengers seated near them to hear.

Katniss nods wordlessly against his chest, her mind a muddle of too many conflicting memories and emotions for her to find her voice.  Little Rue’s sweet singing voice ringing through the treetops of the Arena.  The incredible stoicism Rue’s mother showed at that horrible ceremony they were forced to attend on the Victory Tour.  The tiny pink dress Peeta picked out two years ago in the hope that today would eventually come. 

The dress.  Katniss quickly reaches down and rummages around in her suitcase for a few panicky seconds, letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when her fingers brush up against the little outfit.

Oblivious, Peeta tucks a stray lock of Katniss’ hair behind her ear and kisses the top of her head.

“I packed it,” Katniss says abruptly.  Peeta arches one eyebrow at her, confused. 

“The baby’s dress, I mean,” she clarifies.  “I remembered to bring it along.”

Peeta doesn’t respond at first.  But eventually he understands what she’s telling him.  He lets out a shaky exhale and pulls Katniss into a crushing embrace.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, his voice thick with emotion.  “I’d… actually forgotten all about it,” he admits sheepishly.

Katniss nods and presses a gentle kiss to his neck.  “Well.  It has been a very long time.”

They hold each other close as the train slowly pulls into Eleven’s train station, still as dilapidated as it was sixteen years ago.  It looks so much like it did on the Victory Tour that Katniss freezes in panic when it’s time to disembark, her muscle memory kicking in despite the fact that she and Peeta are in no danger here and have been eagerly awaiting this day for many years.

Peeta ultimately has to help Katniss off the train as memories too horrible to bear flood her senses.  

* * *

 

Ironically, when they had their toasting the year after the war ended, Katniss believed she never wanted children.  Not after everything they’d been through, and not in a world where she still couldn’t trust the government. 

And not while she and Peeta were still far too broken to even properly care for themselves some days. 

Yes, Paylor abolished the Games as one of her very first acts as Panem’s new President.  But nothing was certain in this world except death, and Katniss refused to bring an innocent child into the world only to risk it suffering and dying as so many of their loved ones had done in the all too recent past.

In the weeks leading up to their toasting Katniss told Peeta, again and again, that she never wanted to have children.  But she knew he _did_ want children – that he’d probably wanted them ever since he was a child himself.  He never said as much to her but he didn’t have to.  The way his eyes softened every time a mother, an older sister, a grandfather brought a small child into the bakery told Katniss everything she needed to know.

After everything he’d been through, she owed it to Peeta to give him an out before they were married if not having children was something he couldn’t live with.  .

But at the time, Peeta had readily agreed to go along with her wishes.  In retrospect, Katniss is pretty sure he’d have agreed to just about anything, then, if it meant she’d agree to marry him. 

“I don’t care if you don’t want children,” Peeta had said to her the week before they were married, lying through his teeth, unable to look her in the eye.  “I just want you, Katniss.  Only you.”

Even though Katniss didn’t believe him, Peeta consistently gave her the same answer every time she brought the subject up.  She needed Peeta far too much to let him go, and loved him with every fiber of her being.  And so in the end she kept her doubts to herself and took him at his word.

At their toasting ceremony they fed each other pieces of unevenly toasted bread as Haymitch catcalled; as Johanna made lewd comments; as Delly smiled so broadly it threatened to split her face in two; and as Annie Cresta Odair – her infant son Dylan soundly asleep in her arms – clapped and cheered.

“To my beautiful wife,” Peeta said when it was over, his voice thick with emotion.  He raised a glass of fancy Capitol wine into the air, saved for just this occasion, unable to tear his eyes away from Katniss or from her lacy white gown that had been her mother’s.

“May your lives together be long and happy,” Annie added, with just enough wistfulness in her voice that it made Katniss’ heart ache.

The small group clinked glasses and drank.  Katniss, wine glass still in hand, threw her arms around Peeta’s neck and kissed him, hard, right on the mouth, ignoring Haymitch’s and Johanna’s comments, unable to believe that she and Peeta were finally here. 

Peeta smiled against her lips and kissed her back. 

* * *

 

Katniss was happier during their first few years of marriage than she’d ever dreamed possible.

They both worked hard during those early days.  Everyone in Twelve did.  Their district was struggling to rebuild, and its residents were determined to make it rise like a Phoenix from the ashes. 

Paylor’s new government helped the only ways it really could: by regularly injecting Capitol money into the local economy, and by providing a steady stream of train cars full of the raw materials the people in Twelve needed to rebuild. But it was the people of Twelve themselves who did the actual backbreaking work of building the district up again out of the rubble. 

Through Katniss’, Peeta’s, and their neighbors’ blood, sweat, and tears, the district was slowly – but surely – healing from its scars and beginning anew.  People were tired, and broken, but there was excitement in the air, and hope for the future for the very first time.  It was infectious.  

Every night those first few years, after the hard work of the day was finished, Katniss and Peeta made dinner together.  There’d be meat if Katniss’ day in the woods had been successful and there was some left to spare after sharing with their neighbors; if the forest’s yield that day had been meager they’d eat potatoes and other root vegetables instead.  They ate together on their front porch if the weather was fine, and in their warm kitchen if it wasn’t, their legs tangling together underneath the table as Katniss talked about how Delly and Thom and the others were getting along and Peeta gazed helplessly into her grey eyes.

After washing the dishes, they’d talk about their respective days and make each other laugh as they held each other close on their porch swing.  On their living room couch.  In their bed, after making love.

They both still had demons to fight.  Powerful demons.  Nightmares still plagued Katniss more nights than not, and Peeta still had frightful episodes at least once a week.  But they had each other to lean on. 

And as time passed and District Twelve was slowly reborn, their demons started fading, gradually, into the mist, and seemed more and more manageable with each passing day.

* * *

 

When they’d been married for about three years, the government aired a propo that changed everything. 

It happened one late, sultry summer evening.  Katniss and Peeta were cuddling on the couch in the front room of their Victor’s Village home, an image of President Paylor standing on a sun-drenched beach in Four on the telescreen in front of them.

Katniss hated watching government propos.  But in the first few years after the war, Peeta would insist they tune in occasionally.  “We don’t want anything to catch us by surprise,” he’d tell her. 

As much as she hated to admit it, his point was valid.

In this particular propo the President wore a modest grey suit and held Dylan, Annie’s then three-year-old son, in her arms.  The chubby toddler squealed happily and tried to grab the microphone out of Paylor’s lapel, making both Paylor and the off-screen cameraman laugh.

Katniss rested her head in Peeta’s lap as Paylor spoke.  He caressed her hair in that special way he’d perfected over the years, running his thick but dexterous fingers through her long locks, making little braids only to undo them a minute later. 

That day had been a particularly difficult one for Katniss in the woods.  She was tired, and sore all over, and lying on the sofa in Peeta’s arms was extremely comfortable.  So she was really only half-listening to Paylor’s speech.

“Panem has overcome much,” the President said. Katniss yawned and closed her eyes, and decided to tune out the President by taking a nap.  Unfortunately, Peeta chose that exact moment to turn up the volume on the telescreen, meaning Katniss couldn’t help but stay awake and listen.

“But there is still much rebuilding to be done,” Paylor continued.  “The Great War caused Panem’s population to drop precipitously.  We are dangerously close to having too few people left for us to survive as a race.”  At that, the President paused dramatically and looked straight at the camera.  Katniss rolled her eyes and turned away from the screen.

“Only through determination, and hard work – and _family_ – can Panem become great once more.”  The President placed special emphasis on the word _family_ and jostled Dylan a little on her hip.  She dropped a very deliberate kiss on his cheek, eliciting another delighted squeal from the boy.

“Peeta,” she whined as Paylor moved on to a discussion of Panem’s intra-district exports.  “Can we please shut this off?”

“Don’t you want to see how big Dylan’s gotten?” he asked her, his tone of voice strange.

“We just saw Dylan last month, and we’ll see him again when we go to Seven in six weeks for Johanna’s birthday,” Katniss pointed out. 

But Peeta just shrugged and kept the telescreen on.

“Fine,” Katniss huffed.  “You can stay up and watch this if you want, but it’s late and I’m going to bed.”

She stood up from the sofa and stretched languidly.  Peeta turned his head to watch her as she walked up the stairs, an inscrutable look on his face.

* * *

 

Katniss had been asleep for at least an hour when Peeta finally joined her in bed.

“Mmmm,” she said, sleepily, as he gathered her into his arms and pulled her close.

“I love you,” he said huskily, his breath hot against the sensitive skin just beneath her ear. 

“Love you too,” she said, still half-asleep.  She rolled over and cupped Peeta’s sweet face in her hands, kissing the tip of his nose. 

She was about to roll over again and go back to sleep when Peeta stopped her and kissed her, hard, on the mouth.

Katniss could tell right away that despite the very late hour, Peeta was not tired.  There was nothing sleepy or tentative about this kiss.  He hungrily sucked her at her bottom lip, tracing it with the tip of his tongue just the way she liked and teasing it into his mouth.  He ran his strong hands, calloused from the hard manual labor involved in rebuilding the bakery, up and along her sides until her nightshirt had ridden halfway up her rib cage.

“Peeta,” Katniss said, gasping and laughing a little when he grabbed at the bottom hem of her shirt and quickly lifted it over her head.  “It’s almost midnight.  You have to open the bakery tomorrow morning…”

“I don’t really care about any of that right now,” Peeta told her abruptly, bending down to take one of her bare breasts into his mouth.  He sucked on the dusky pink nipple gently and swirled his tongue, and suddenly all of the very good reasons Katniss had for why this wasn’t a good idea right now flew out of her head.

Peeta hadn’t been back in Twelve for very long before they started sleeping together at night.  And it wasn’t very long after _that_ before they began having sex.  In the early years of their marriage they seldom went more than a few nights in a row without making love.  They’d denied themselves what they really wanted – each other – for far too long.  Now that there was nothing keeping them apart they had a very hard time keeping their hands off each other.

Much to Haymitch’s immense annoyance when they slept with the windows open.

It was very late, and Katniss was mentally and physically exhausted, but as Peeta’s hands worked themselves over her body none of that mattered anymore.  When he thrust himself inside her and began to move in the way that felt both new and familiar every single time they did this, she arched her back and moaned, giving his lips and tongue better access to her breasts and changing the angle so that she could feel every part of him as he moved.

“Yes,” Katniss breathed after only a few minutes, as he fell apart inside of her, taking her along with him as they toppled together over the edge.

* * *

 

Afterwards, they lay tangled together amongst the rumpled sheets, and as Katniss was once again on the verge of sleep, Peeta cleared his throat, startling her.

“I want to have a baby, Katniss,” he said, sounding timid.  Katniss’ head was resting on his bare chest, her ear just above his breastbone where his heart rate was slowly returning to normal.  The words, quietly spoken, rumbled in his chest and reverberated in her ear.

Katniss propped herself up on one elbow so she could look at his face.  But Peeta’s eyes were fixed on an invisible spot on the ceiling.

“What?” Katniss asked, trying to keep her voice level and reasonable even though it felt like she’d just been slapped.

Peeta glanced at her once, very briefly, before averting his eyes once more.

“I want to – I want _us_ to – have a baby,” Peeta said again.

“Why?” Katniss demanded, her voice shriller than she’d intended it to be.  But she was far too shocked by what Peeta’d just told her, and far too rattled, to care.  “We’ve discussed this, Peeta --“

“Katniss, please listen,” he asked, his voice pleading.  He sat up in bed and looked her right in the eye.  Even now, years later, when Katniss thinks back on the look of desperation on his face in that moment her heart breaks for him all over again.  “Just listen to me…”

But she didn’t want to listen to him.  “That propo tonight,” Katniss spat at him.  “Is that what this is about?  _Peeta_.  Don’t you realize what they’re trying to do?”  Because suddenly, the purpose behind tonight’s strange propo was perfectly clear.  “They want to use Victors’ babies as props to show a happy Panem, and well-adjusted and healing Victors.  They want to use Annie’s baby – _our_ babies – _all_ Victors’ babies to encourage people to _breed_ so that –“

Katniss was shouting now, and so hysterical she wasn’t certain what she was saying anymore.  She got out of bed and began pacing the room as she yelled, gesticulating wildly.

Peeta jumped out of bed and grabbed Katniss’ arms so she’d stop moving.  He tried to pull her into his arms but she yanked herself free of him.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest and turned her back to Peeta, facing the wall.

“Katniss.  _If_ we have a baby, and if Plutarch, or Paylor, or anyone else from the Capitol wants to put him in some propo,” Peeta said through clenched teeth, “they’ll have to get through me first.  I promise.”

At his words, Katniss turned and looked at him.  His jaw was set and determined, and his eyes blazed with an intensity she’d seldom seen before.

“And.  Well.  I’m pretty fucking tough.”  His jaw relaxed slightly.  His mouth quirked up in a half smile. “I’ve survived two Hunger Games, you know.  _Two_ of them.  Not just one.”

Katniss stared at Peeta for a long moment, blinking silently.  And then suddenly, unbidden, a bubble of laughter escaped her at the ridiculousness of what he’d just said.  Peeta’s stance relaxed as she laughed, and he started laughing a little with her.

But at length, Katniss shook her head and buried her face in her hands.  “Peeta -- even if we can protect a future child of ours from being used by the government – which we can’t,” she added, quickly, “There’s no way we can guarantee the baby will be safe.  There are no Reapings now, but what if Paylor or some other president brings them back?”

“They won’t, Katniss,” Peeta promised.

“You can’t know that!” Katniss yelled, throwing up her hands.  “And besides, there’s no way we can guarantee that you or I will be well enough in a year’s time, or even in _two_ years’ time, to be fit parents.”

Peeta pulled her into his arms, and this time she didn’t resist.  “We’ve managed pretty well the past few years,” he murmured into her hair.  “I haven’t had an episode in – what is it, a whole month now?  Your nightmares are getting fewer and farther between.”

“But we’re not all the way better,” Katniss protested, her head resting against his chest.  “Your last episode was a month ago but it was a terrible one.  I don’t think we’ll ever be truly well, Peeta.  I really don’t.”

Peeta kissed the top of her head and sighed.  “We probably won’t.”

Katniss pulled away from him again.  “So what if we have a baby, and there comes a day when we’re both sick?  A day when I’m too ill to get out of bed and you have an episode?  What happens then?”

Peeta didn’t answer her for a long moment.  He chewed his lip and fidgeted with his hands, as though he were choosing his next words very carefully.

“If that happens, Katniss,” he began, slowly, “We’ll get through it the way we’ve gotten through everything that’s happened to us since the first time we were Reaped.  One day at a time, and with help from our friends.  Haymitch – you know, that guy who lives next door to us.  Annie.  And Johanna.”  He smiled sadly at her.  “People who know us and love us and who want to help.”

Katniss closed her eyes and shook her head.  This was all coming from nowhere, and she couldn’t process it.  She didn’t want to process it.

“I’m tired, Peeta.  I need to go to sleep,” she said.  She walked past him and climbed into bed, pulling the covers up over her head and effectively ending the discussion.

She could hear Peeta’s loud sigh as he pulled back the covers on his side of the bed and climbed in next to her.  His breathing evened out shortly thereafter, indicating that he’d fallen asleep. 

But Katniss stayed awake long into the night, her mind racing.

* * *

 

In the middle of the following spring, on the first warm day of the year, Katniss decided to make the most of the beautiful day and take the long way home from the woods.

It was rather amazing to her, really, how easily everyone in Twelve had managed to find new roles and new routines.  In those early days, Katniss and Peeta Mellark, together, were largely responsible for keeping everyone in town fed.  It was a role that suited them both just fine.

 

There still weren’t many people living here.  Most survivors of the fire-bombing either stayed in Thirteen or had moved on to other places to try and escape the ghosts of the past.  Despite that, District Twelve was now thriving – at least relative to the state it was in prior to the rebellion and after the end of the war. 

On this particular day, Katniss walked by the new school that had been built the prior year for the district’s youngest children, just as she always did on her way home from the woods.  The weather had been far too cold this winter for the children to play outside, but today they were out, playing with balls and other small toys and being shepherded around by their teacher, Mrs. Heddle. 

Most of the children looked like Seam kids.  Or, rather, kids from what used to be the Seam.  But here and there Katniss spotted a redheaded boy or a blonde-haired girl, playing with their darker-skinned friends like doing so was the most natural thing in the world.

Just as Katniss was about to pass by the school and head for home she turned her head to look back at the children one last time.  Right at the fence, in front of the other children, was a tiny blonde-haired boy with bright blue eyes.

The boy’s face lit up in recognition immediately when their eyes met.  District Twelve was still small enough back then that everyone knew everyone else, at least by sight, and this child would likely have recognized her even if she weren’t the famous Katniss Mellark, survivor of two Hunger Games and the symbol of the rebellion that brought down President Snow.

The blonde-haired little boy just stood there at the fence, staring at Katniss with one of his chubby thumbs jammed into his mouth, as his little friends played chasing games all around him.  He stuck his free hand up in the air and waved at her, his baby-like fingers curling slightly at the ends.

Katniss felt a lump rise in her throat as she and the boy who looked so very much like her husband continued to stare at each other.  Suddenly, and without warning, future images of this blonde-haired boy she did not know began to flash before her eyes.  An image of the boy, next year, on his first day of grade school.  An image of him on his graduation day, standing tall and proud with his family, after making it to age eighteen without the double specter of Reapings and the Games hanging over his head. 

The boy, now a young man, nervously bringing a girl home to meet his parents for the first time. The broad smile on his face the day of his toasting.

A very long moment later, the boy’s teacher called all the children inside for their afternoon snack.  He immediately turned his back on Katniss and ran to catch up with his friends.

Katniss stayed rooted to the spot for several more minutes, uncertain of what had just happened, knowing only that something inside her had changed irrevocably. 

She walked the rest of the way home in a daze, feeling, for the first time in her life, that perhaps hope for the future was a stronger force than fear.

* * *

 

After arriving home, and without thinking about what she was about to do – because if she thought about what she was about to do she wouldn’t be able to go through with it, she knew she wouldn’t – Katniss marched straight to their bedroom where Peeta was, fortunately, lying in bed taking an afternoon nap.  A rare indulgence for him.

Taking great pains to make as much noise as possible Katniss stripped off most of her clothing.  When she was down to nothing but her bra and underwear she stomped into their bathroom in bare feet and slid open the door to their medicine cabinet with shaking hands.

She took out her small package of birth control capsules, given to her at her last doctor’s appointment.  She clutched them tightly in her right hand and closed her eyes, working up the courage to carry out this plan she’d only just thought of on the way home from the nursery school.

By the time she returned to their bedroom Peeta was blinking himself awake.  His eyes widened a little – in surprise or arousal; possibly a combination of both – as he took in her half-naked form.

“Katniss?” Peeta asked, confused, his voice bleary with sleep.

Wordlessly, Katniss peeled off her underwear and unclasped her bra, letting the garments fall to the floor.  She sauntered over to the small trash can by their night stand and gave Peeta a half smile.

As Peeta watched her, Katniss popped her birth control capsules, one by one, out of their individual foil pouches and tossed them into the trash can with a small flourish.

“Ok, Peeta,” she said, nodding.  She climbed atop him as he laid there, his body rigid with shock.

“What – what --?” Peeta spluttered before she shut him up with a heated kiss.

“Let’s try,” she said simply against his lips.  “I don’t want to be afraid anymore and… and I think I’m ready to try.”


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading. :) It means so much to me.
> 
> Again, thank you to Sponsormusings, MalTease, and Salanderjade for pre-reading this chapter and for their extremely helpful advice.
> 
> If you'd like to find me on tumblr (even after this chapter...), I'm there as jeeno2.

Eleven’s only hospital is smaller than Katniss had imagined it would be.  It’s probably too small, really, to adequately care for the entire district’s population.

But it’s clean.  And, reassuringly, its medical equipment seems more or less on par with what Twelve has these days. 

The nurses who greet them are very friendly.  “We’re so happy you came,” says the elderly woman who seems to run the reception desk.  “To think what might have happened if you hadn’t answered the phone…”

“Where is she?” Peeta cuts in, impatient.  His voice carries an edge that Katniss knows he doesn’t intend.  She puts her hand on his upper arm and gives it a squeeze in an attempt to reassure.

The nurse, if she’s affronted by Peeta’s tone, doesn’t show it.  She smiles warmly at them both.

“You’ll be able to see her in a few hours, Mr. Mellark,” she says, very gently.  “I promise.”

At the woman’s words Peeta relaxes a little.  But he runs his free hand through his hair several times, a nervous tic he’s carried with him ever since the first Games. 

Katniss knows Peeta won’t really be able to calm down until she’s in his arms.

The kindly nurse brings them to a comfortable waiting area with small, plush seats.  Nobody else is in the room, for which Katniss is grateful.  The table in the center of the room has stacks of bland looking magazines and Katniss picks one up at random.  It’s something to do with landscape design in the outer districts, according to the cover. 

Katniss takes a seat against the wall and flips through the magazine absently, just for something to do with her hands. 

But Peeta ignores the magazines. He ignores Katniss.  He sits next to her, his body rigid, his eyes fixed intensely on the wall opposite them.  His arms are folded tightly across his chest and his lips are pressed together in a thin line.

“Mr. and Mrs. Mellark?” the nurse who brought them here says before leaving the room.

“Yes?”  Katniss replies, when Peeta doesn’t respond.

The older woman beams at them.  “She’s just beautiful.”

* * *

 

It took them a very long time before they were able to admit to themselves that something might be wrong.

Years ago, women sometimes came to the Everdeen house, embarrassed and in tears, because they wanted to have a baby but couldn’t seem to manage it.  They thought Katniss’ mother might be able to help them.  Elise Everdeen, as much as she wanted to help, had only the most rudimentary of medicines at her disposal.  There was little she could do for these women but give them advice about charting their cycles, provide tips on relaxation, and offer a shoulder to cry on. 

Some of these women got pregnant later.  Other didn’t.  Either way Katniss’ mother believed none of it had anything to do with what she’d done for them.  “These women need someone to talk to, and I’m happy to be that person,” she’d say.  “But if getting rid of stress had anything to do with getting pregnant no one in Twelve would ever have children.”

Two years to the day after Katniss met that little blonde boy who looked so very much like her husband in the schoolyard, and she decided she was ready to have a baby with Peeta, she still wasn’t pregnant.  She didn’t know much about the mechanics of getting pregnant – aside from the very obvious, of course, which she was _fairly_ confident she and Peeta were getting right.  But she did know it wasn’t supposed to take this long. 

She began to wonder if seeing a doctor might be necessary for them to have a baby.  A real doctor; not someone like her mother. 

Time was passing.  By then, many of their friends had children.  It wasn’t just Annie anymore, whose son was now eight years old and the spitting image of his father.  Delly, right here in Twelve, was pregnant with her second child.  Even Gale Hawthorne, of all people, was married – with a son and a daughter – out in Two. 

Worst of all, the furniture in the nursery Peeta built himself the month after Katniss tossed away her birth control capsules was beginning to yellow with age.  Just a little; just the furniture he’d painted white.  Regardless, it served as a daily reminder of just how _long_ this was taking.

It was affecting them in ways Katniss hadn’t imagined possible two years ago. If this had been difficult on Katniss – and it had been; every single month she didn’t become pregnant she felt a little bit emptier inside, a little bit more a failure as a wife to Peeta – it had been a special kind of torture for Peeta, who she now understood had wanted children quite literally his entire life.

Every month, when it was suddenly clear, again, that they still weren’t about to have a baby, Peeta would immediately excuse himself from the house. “To clear my head,” he’d always tell her, his eyes glassy and rimmed with red.  He’d recently taken to leaving the room every time Delly came to visit, her belly now round like an autumn pumpkin and her one-year-old daughter Amber toddling everywhere. 

And in recent months, Peeta had even begun asking his assistant to wait on pregnant customers, and customers with young children, always coming up with different reasons why he suddenly needed to attend to something in the back room.

It was clear to Katniss that for Peeta’s sake, if not for her own, things could not continue like this for much longer.  And so over dinner one night she asked Peeta if he’d be willing to see a doctor with her.

“A real doctor,” she added quickly.  “Someone who specializes in… these things.”  She had no idea what sort of doctor that might be, but she knew they’d have to leave Twelve to see one.  Things in Twelve were much better now than they were when they were children, of course, but no doctors for this existed here. 

At Katniss’ proposal Peeta fidgeted with his napkin and couldn’t look her in the eye for a very long moment.  When he did, finally, his eyes were sadder than she’d seen them since she’d helped him build the memorial for his family in the town square.  Katniss had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting into tears.

“All right,” Peeta said, nodding, his voice very thick.  “We probably should.”

* * *

 

 

The doctor’s office in Three where they learned the full extent of what Snow’s government did to Peeta during his captivity was all sharp angles.  All chrome, glass, and polish. 

It clashed quite jarringly with the doctor’s personality.  Dr. Vanger – the doctor assigned to their case, someone Beetee insisted was one of the best physicians in all of Panem -- was kind, and warm, and patient.

Dr. Vanger reminded Katniss a lot of Dr. Aurelius.  He was everything his office’s décor was not.

Katniss focused hard on all of these stupid details – details she knew, deep down, were irrelevant; things that didn’t matter in the slightest – as Dr. Vanger very patiently explained to them both exactly why it was that Katniss wasn’t getting pregnant.

She heard Peeta talking to the doctor.  Asking him what sounded like smart questions about the diagnosis.  How was Peeta even capable of _speaking_ right now, after what they’d just learned?

But then, Peeta had always had a gift with words, Katniss mused.  Even in the most horrifying circumstances.

“Well, we’re not certain if your… condition, let’s call it… might improve someday, Mr. Mellark,” Dr. Vanger said, in response to whatever it was Peeta had just asked him.  The doctor’s eyes were kind too, Katniss noticed.  She was glad this doctor was being nice to them, even though in the end that changed nothing.  “Because there’s no precedent for it, you see.  No one has ever lived this long after being exposed to the levels of tracker jacker venom you were.”

Peeta nodded at that and clenched his jaw, his face a mask of agony.

“But for now,” Peeta said, very slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, his eyes more tormented than Katniss had seen them in many years, “you’re telling me that…” Peeta trailed off.  He closed his eyes and bit his lower lip.  He buried his face in his hands and let out a strangled sob.

“I’m telling you that your hijacking – all that tracker jacker venom you had in your body for such a long period of time – seems to have destroyed your body’s natural ability to produce normal sperm.”  Dr. Vanger closed his eyes and shook his head.  “Mr. Mellark I… I’m just so sorry.”

Peeta didn’t say anything in response to that.  The room was quiet for a very long time.  Katniss looked at her husband out of the corner of her eye, and saw he was still hunched over, his face in his hands, his body shaking in silent sobs.

She could feel her heart breaking.  For both of them.  But especially for Peeta, who had wanted this so badly and for so long.  She reached out and placed her warm palm on his back, hoping he was taking comfort in her gentle touch.

She glanced at Dr. Vanger, who looked as though he expected one of them to say something in response to what he’d told them.

“Um… Dr. Vanger,” Katniss said, realizing Peeta had reached the end of his ability to participate in this discussion.  “Is there any chance… any chance at all of us having a baby?”  Having spent most of this meeting pretending it was not happening, that none of these horrible things were being discussed, Katniss wasn’t certain if Peeta had asked this already.  But she believed Dr. Vanger wouldn’t judge her harshly for asking it again even if he had.

Dr. Vanger steepled his fingers together and rested his chin on the point they made.  He sighed and closed his eyes.  “I never tell my patients _never_ , Mrs. Mellark,” he began, cautiously. “And I’m not telling you never, either.  But there’s no medical fix for this that we’ve discovered yet.  Unless Peeta’s condition spontaneously corrects itself – or, at the very least, unless his sperm count dramatically improves…”  Dr. Vanger trailed off and began to shake his head, wordlessly.   

Which told Katniss everything she needed to know.

* * *

 

Katniss realized, later, once they were back home and curled tightly around each other in their bed, Peeta finally asleep after exhausting himself from crying, that she’d originally expected a simple fix to this.  She thought the doctor in Three would simply look them over, run a few tests, and immediately determine what the problem was.

She thought he’d give them some simple advice – some medicine to take, perhaps; pills or shots or something – and that that would fix everything.

How naïve she’d been, she thought bitterly, fitting herself more closely to Peeta’s sleeping body, to think that Snow’s regime, even after his death, would ever truly let them live in peace.

* * *

 

The next morning, Katniss woke up much later than usual. 

Without opening her eyes she sighed and rolled over to Peeta’s side of the bed, planning to throw her arms around him and bury her face in his neck.  To kiss him and hold him close until he agreed to talk with her about what they’d just learned. 

Because although they sat together for hours on the train home, and cried together in their bed last night, they hadn’t actually _talked_ since leaving Dr. Vanger’s office yesterday.

But Peeta’s side of the bed was empty and his sheets cool.  Surprised, Katniss opened her eyes.  Sure enough, Peeta was gone.  He’d left without waking her. Katniss dressed quickly and walked downstairs, hoping Peeta hadn’t left for the day yet.

He hadn’t.  Katniss found him sitting with his head in his hands, on the edge of that same sofa they’d snuggled on all those years ago when they watched that terrible propo with Paylor and Dylan on the beach.

“Peeta?” Katniss asked, tentatively.  He didn’t say anything, or even lift his head, in response.  He continued to sit there, unmoving, as though she hadn’t addressed him.

Katniss sat next to him and put her arm around his shoulder, trying to pull him closer to her.  But he shrugged out of her embrace immediately and practically leapt from his seat.

“Peeta…” Katniss called out as he pulled on his shoes, quickly double-knotting the laces.  Without another word he opened the front door to their home, walked through it, and slammed it shut behind him.

* * *

 

By the time Peeta had been gone for two hours, Katniss realized he likely wasn’t coming home to apologize for brushing her off anytime soon.  And she started to worry.

She sat in their living room, anxiously watching as the minutes ticked by on their clock.  After another hour passed she decided she’d waited long enough.   She pulled on her shoes and quickly ran out the front door.

Haymitch was standing in the middle of his front lawn, tending to his stupid geese like he usually did at this time of day.  Katniss hoped to escape his notice.  She really needed to find Peeta and talk to him, but more than that she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to make small talk with their former mentor.

But Haymitch saw her right away.

“Hey Sweetheart,” he shouted from his yard.  She looked in his direction and saw him walking towards her.

Her stomach sank.

“How was Three?” he asked, swinging the stick over his shoulder that he normally used to poke at the geese.

Before leaving to meet with Dr. Vanger they told Haymitch they’d be gone a few days.  He was their neighbor, of course, and he’d have noticed their absence even if they hadn’t said something in advance.  And if they hadn’t told him they were leaving he’d have worried when he saw they were gone, even though he’d never admit to it.

They didn’t give him the reason for their trip.  That was information that Katniss and Peeta felt was not only too personal too share, but also something Haymitch wouldn’t have wanted to know anyway. 

But they did mention they’d be seeing Beetee while in Three, and so it was only reasonable, now, for Haymitch to ask questions about it.  Even if him doing so at this precise moment was extremely ill-timed and inconvenient.

Katniss briefly thought about lying to Haymitch and telling him the trip was fine.  That it had been a great getaway, and just what they needed. 

But at the last minute she decided against it.

“It was terrible,” she admitted. 

Haymitch’s brow creased in concern.  His advancing middle age – and his newfound sobriety – was making him much less apt than he used to be to hide his concern for others behind a veneer of sarcasm and feigned disinterest.

“Terrible?” he asked, sounding alarmed.  “How?  Is Beetee ok?”

“Yeah,” Katniss said, nodding.  “Yeah.  Beetee’s fine.”  She took a deep breath and steeled her nerves.  “We got some… bad news in Three.  About Peeta’s health.”  She looked up into the worried eyes of her former mentor, and then looked away, at the ground, at the holes the geese were making in Haymitch’s front yard.  “We found out about another… side effect of the hijacking we didn’t know about before.  And… well.  It’s bad.”

Haymitch took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.  Katniss cautiously looked up at him again and saw the same guilty, tormented expression he always wore whenever the subject of Peeta’s captivity came up.

“Is it… cancer?” he asked in a very low voice.

“Oh. No,” Katniss said quickly.  “No, it’s nothing like that.  He’ll be fine.  It’s… just, something we weren’t expecting.”  She averted her eyes again.  “Peeta’s really upset about it.  And… and so am I.  He left this morning without saying goodbye.”  She swallowed audibly.  “I really need to find him.”

To Katniss’ great relief Haymitch didn’t pry further.  He only nodded and patted her lightly on the shoulder.  “All right, Sweetheart,” he said, quietly.  “I hope everything turns out all right.”  He turned away from her and started walking back towards his house.

On impulse, and before she even realized she’d done it, Katniss called after him again.  “Haymitch?” 

He stopped walking and turned to face her. “Yeah?”

“Did you… did you ever want children?” she blurted out. 

“What?” he stammered, obviously not expecting this question.  Which was reasonable of course.  Why would he have?

“I mean…” she swallowed, already deeply regretting her decision to ask him about this.  “I mean, do you ever get sad that… that you never had children?”

Haymitch walked towards her very slowly.  He put down the stick he’d been holding and scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. 

“When I was your age?  No,” he said bluntly.  “Back then, Sweetheart, I was too busy trying to drink myself to death, and too busy thinking about other people’s children whose lives I was never going to be able to save.”

Katniss nodded.  “I see,” she said, stupidly, not certain what she’d expected him to say.

“But now?”  Haymitch continued, the tone in his voice strange and unreadable.  “Over the past few years?  I sort of feel like I _do_ have children now, to be honest.”  Now it was his turn to look away.  “Whether I like it or not.”

He smiled sadly at her, patted her on the shoulder again, and walked back to his house to tend to his geese.

* * *

 

It was nearly midnight before Peeta finally returned home.

“Peeta,” Katniss sighed in relief when he entered their darkened bedroom.  She sat up in bed and hugged her knees to her chest.  “Where have you been?  I looked everywhere for you.”

“I was out,” he said, cryptically.  He sighed and rubbed his face with the back of his hand.  He sat on the edge of their bed, his back to her, his shoulders slumped.

“I’m so sorry, Katniss,” Peeta continued, his voice hoarse.  “I’m just… I’m so sorry…” 

“Peeta,” Katniss said, alarmed at his tone.  He clearly wasn’t apologizing for having been gone all day.  “What are you talking about?”

“This,” he said simply, moving his hands meaningfully.  Katniss closed her eyes and willed herself to swallow the sob threatening to escape her at his implication.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Katniss said as gently as she could, her voice wavering.  “This is something that was done to you.  To _both_ of us.”  She shook her head; but his back was still to her, and he didn’t see the gesture.

“I’m just… you just…” Peeta began again.  He shook his head violently back and forth, as if trying to clear it, and took several deep breaths.  “You don’t deserve this.”

Katniss crawled down to the edge of the bed where Peeta still sat, unmoving, her heart in her throat.

“Neither of us do,” she told him, huskily, willing herself not to cry.  Yesterday’s news was tearing her apart inside, but she needed to be strong now.  For Peeta.  “You don’t deserve it either.”  She put her arms around him, but tentatively, remembering how he’d rebuffed her attempts at comforting him this morning.

To her relief he didn’t fight her this time.  He turned towards her, pulling her close, and buried his face in her neck.

But his next words, spoken very quietly, turned the blood in her veins to ice.

“You’d have been so much better off with Gale,” he told her, pulling away and standing up, his stance broken and defeated.

“What in the _hell_ are you talking about?” Katniss demanded, forgetting to be gentle.  “Peeta –“

Peeta spun on his heels to face her.  “Gale doesn’t have flashbacks every month that scare his wife half to death,” Peeta began, as though reciting from a list he’d prepared and memorized.  “Gale is… handsome, and wealthy and… he could have given you ch-ch-children…”

At that Katniss stood up and marched across the room to where Peeta was standing.

“Peeta Mellark,” she began warningly.

“Katniss,” he said, his voice strangled.  Up close, Katniss could see that Peeta’s face was streaked with the tracks of dried tears.  He turned to leave the room but she was too fast for him.  She quickly positioned herself so that his body was wedged between hers and the wall, trapped.

Katniss wanted to tell him he was being ridiculous.  That he was the only man she had ever loved.  That she needed him like she needed air to breathe.

That it wasn’t _a baby_ she wanted – but rather _his_ baby.  Their baby.  A baby they would create, and raise, together.

But Katniss was terrible with words and Peeta was too distraught for her to risk getting any of it wrong.

So instead of telling him anything at all she shoved him, hard, up against the wall of their bedroom and kissed him.

Peeta tried to push her away at first.  But when she began worrying his bottom lip with her teeth and slipped her tongue past his lips he seemed to have an immediate and total change of heart.  Peeta whimpered into her mouth, wrapping his arms tightly around her as he pulled her even more closely to his body.

Katniss pulled away a little to catch her breath, but only for a moment.  And then her lips were brushing against his again.  Gently, at first.  But soon enough his tongue was caressing the roof of her mouth, her teeth, her gums, and his mouth was all but devouring hers.

As they kissed and twined together in the darkness Katniss ran her hands down the flat planes of his chest that she knew so well and had kissed so many times, and down along his arms that were strong and muscled from years spent lifting heavy bags of flour – arms that he used to pin her to their bed, and wrestle playfully with her, and hold her close. 

She reached down and clutched at his large hands fiercely.  Possessively.  Wasting no time, Peeta entwined his fingers – fingers that had touched and pleasured every inch of her body countless times over – with hers.  He pulled away from her mouth and began pressing desperate, open-mouthed kisses down her neck and along the fading scars along her collarbone, humming against her skin, making her shiver.

The thought of being with another man like this was repellant.  Unthinkable.  Peeta had to know this.

“I only want a baby with _you_ ,” she finally managed to say.  “Only you, Peeta.  I love you so much.”

That wasn’t all of it.  Not by a long shot.  But perhaps it was all he really needed to hear in that moment.  At her words Peeta kissing her and stood up straight to look her in the eye.

His brilliant blue eyes were clear, now.  Free of tears.  And half-lidded with desire.  The hungry look he was giving her made her knees shaky.

“We’ll get through this,” she said, ignoring, for the moment, the flicker of desire that was settling in the pit of her stomach.  She gently cradled Peeta’s handsome face – the face she loved so much – in her hands.  He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch.

“Will we?” he asked, weakly.

“Yes.  I promise.”  She kissed him again, on the mouth, but very gently this time.  “It’s what we do.”

They stood like that, leaning up against the wall of their bedroom, bodies pressed together and fingers entwined, for a very long time.  Eventually Peeta yawned, very loudly, making Katniss laugh in spite of herself.

She suggested, very quietly, that perhaps they should go to bed.

Peeta kissed the top of her head.  “Okay,” he sighed.

“Don’t you _ever_ suggest I should have chosen a different man, Peeta,” she warned.  “Not ever.”

“I won’t,” he promised.  “I’m sorry, Katniss.  That was a terrible thing for me to say. It’s just… I was just…”

She cut him off with another tender kiss, into which she poured all the love she felt for him in her heart.

Their hands still linked together like an unbreakable bond, they walked across the room and pulled back the covers to their bed.


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, many thanks to Sponsormusings, MalTease, and Salanderjade for pre-reading sections of this chapter for me. And thank you all so much for reading. It means the world to me.
> 
> This story will ultimately have 7 parts to it -- a prologue; five chapters; and an epilogue. What can I say? I'm more long-winded than I anticipated at the outset. ;)
> 
> If you'd like to find me on tumblr, where I blog about THG, Game of Thrones/ASOIAF, and ridiculous cats, I'm there as jeeno2.

Katniss walked quietly across the meadow as the sun rose over the foothills, the grass under her feet still damp with early morning dew.  She gripped her bow tightly in her right hand and carried her arrows in a canvas bag slung loosely across her back.

Katniss normally started her day several hours after Peeta left to open the bakery.  But that summer had been the hottest one either of them could remember since childhood, and the sweltering heat changed the woodland animals’ daily patterns dramatically.  By ten in the morning the deer and squirrels of District Twelve were already seeking relief from the heat, and were usually hidden so well Katniss would come home empty-handed if she didn’t follow Peeta’s lead and rise well before dawn herself.

And coming home empty-handed wasn’t an option.  Not if she wanted to keep her shelves stocked and her friends and neighbors fed.

As Katniss crossed over the border that no longer existed between Twelve and what lay beyond – over the space where the electrified fence, torn down nearly eight years earlier, used to keep them all penned in animals waiting for slaughter themselves – she saw a small boar rooting around in a pile of leaves not twenty feet away from her.  

Katniss smiled to herself, recovering quickly from the surprise of seeing a boar so far from where they usually grazed. 

Over the past few years – with a lot of hard work and not a small amount of good luck – Katniss had slowly built a successful business near where the Hob used to be.  People from all over the district now relied on her for their meat, just as they relied on her husband for bread.  

But even though things in Twelve were markedly better for almost everyone than they were when she was a child, wild boar was rare here, and pork still a delicacy.  If she wanted to sell pork Katniss normally had to import it from Ten or Eleven.

However, if one boar was here, so far away from its usual habitat, there were bound to be others nearby.  The thought made Katniss smile even wider.  She’d be able get this pork for free.  She wouldn’t have to pay an exorbitant importing fee for it, and could pass that savings directly on to her customers.

Silently, Katniss reached behind her and grabbed an arrow from her bag.  She raised her bow expertly, her eye following the taut string to the very end, and notched the arrow _just so_.  Knowing, from decades of experience, the precise angle she needed to hit the boar directly in the eye.

But in the half-instant Katniss always needed between notching her arrow and letting it fly, a doe crossed into her peripheral vision with her two young fawns. 

Katniss saw deer almost every day of the week.  She shot them at least weekly, and venison was a staple of her growing business.  But something about this particular group of deer was so compelling it wrested her attention from the boar as though she’d never seen a deer before in her life.

The deer weren’t doing much.  The two fawns were standing very close to their mother as she reached up and methodically ate leaves from a nearby tree.  She chewed them the way any deer might – slowly, and with a vacant expression on her face.  And then she moved a bit to the right to give her children better access to the food source.

As the smaller of the two fawns approached the tree, the doe nuzzled it with her face, in a gesture as maternal and loving as any Katniss had ever seen from an animal before.  The fawn stood there for a very long moment, ignoring the tree and her breakfast, and burrowed her face into her mother’s side, making small, content mewling noises.

Without warning, something akin to a dam broke inside Katniss at the tender sight of mother and child together.

As the boar wandered off, oblivious to how close to death he’d just been, Katniss sank to her knees and sobbed brokenly into the ground.

* * *

 

Katniss crept in the back door of their house several hours later, her sheaf of arrows full and her game bag as empty as it had been when she left that morning.

She could tell right away that Peeta was still at the bakery.  The energy in their home was always different, somehow, when he wasn’t there.  Grateful for his absence – she didn’t want him to see her like this; he _couldn’t_ see her like this – Katniss set her bags down by the front door and slowly climbed the stairs to their bedroom.

Once there she fell into bed and pulled the covers up over her head despite the rising heat of the early afternoon, the image of the little blonde boy that would never be theirs so fixed in her mind’s eye it almost felt like he was real.  Like she could reach out and touch his face.

Stifling a sob, Katniss willed sleep to take her and to blot out the world, just as the girl she used to be had done in a different lifetime, over an entirely different loss.

\-------

Katniss’ need to protect Peeta from knowing the sudden onset and full depth of her sorrow was the only thing that propelled her down the stairs, hours later, when it was time for dinner.

But it didn’t matter.  Peeta saw the difference in her as soon as she entered the kitchen. 

She shouldn’t have been surprised, of course, she thought fleetingly as she registered the look of alarm on Peeta’s face.  He’d always been able to look in her eyes and see right into her soul. 

* * *

 

“You’ve been taking such good care of me,” Peeta murmured into her ear much later that night, after the dinner dishes were washed and put away and Katniss’ uneaten meal had been saved, in plastic, for later.    

They’d been lying in bed, silently, for nearly an hour, his hand gently stroking her upper arm.  The way he always comforted her when she’d screamed herself awake from a nightmare, during that specific period of the night when she’d calmed down enough to stop crying but was nowhere near calm enough yet to fall back to sleep.

Her back had been to him ever since they climbed into bed together earlier that evening.  But at his words she rolled over to face him.  

“What’s changed, Katniss?” he asked her quietly.  He reached out and tucked a stray lock of dark brown hair behind her ear.  “For the past three weeks you’ve been reassuring me, constantly, telling me over and over again that this was fine, that _you_ were fine, that we’d get through this…”

“And I mean all of that, Peeta,” Katniss told him.  But her traitor voice wavered; gave her away.

“But you’re _not_ fine,” he insisted.  “I know you’re not.  If you’ve been… I don’t know, bottling up your feelings, or whatever it is you’ve been doing, in order to protect me… you don’t have to do that Katniss.”  He cupped her face in his hands.   “You have a right to be sad about this…”

Katniss opened her mouth to speak, but when she tried to form words her breath hitched in her chest, and all that came out was a loud, incoherent sob.

“Katniss…” Peeta whimpered, gathering her up in his arms and pulling her close.

She didn’t know how long she cried against his shoulder.  Time simultaneously stood still and sped up whenever she went to pieces like this.  But Peeta knew what to do.  He always knew exactly what to do.  He rocked her, and made soothing _shhing_ sounds, and did all the right things that always comforted her when it felt like the entire weight of the world was pressing down on her and her chest was hollow with pain.

At length, when her sobs finally subsided, she found her voice.

“I just… didn’t want you to feel responsible or… or badly, or like this was your fault,” she sniffled.  “I just… you were just… so upset… and… I wanted to… and I didn’t know how badly I wanted this… until…”

Unbidden, the face of the child they would never have flashed in front of her eyes once more, and she dissolved into tears again.

“Katniss,” Peeta murmured into her hair.  He kissed the top of her head.  He sighed a little – a sad, worried sound – and pulled back to kiss her forehead, leaving his lips lingering a long moment against her flushed, heated skin. 

“I’m devastated by the news, Katniss,” he murmured.  “Of course I am.  But…”  Peeta paused, as though contemplating his next words very carefully.  “But I’ve had time to process it now.  I have.  And I now I know – I mean, really _know_ – that this isn’t my fault.  Snow did this to me.  He did this to _us._ ”  He was parroting Katniss’ words of reassurance from three weeks ago back to her – words that came so naturally to her at the time, and words she desperately needed Peeta to believe, both then and now.

“And I also know – or believe, anyway – that you still want me regardless.”  He raised one eyebrow at her and one side of his mouth quirked up in a half smile.  “Sperm or no sperm.”

Peeta’s unexpected and irreverent words pulled an involuntary, rough bark of laughter from Katniss.  She pulled back from him and looked him in the eye.  Instead of the guilt, or sorrow, she expected to see there, all she saw was concern for her.

Her stomach sank a little.  It was a look she knew very well.

But Peeta’s smile grew a little bigger.  He was obviously pleased that he made her laugh.  “I don’t know how we’re going to get through this, Katniss,” he admitted.    “But we will.  I know that now.”  He leaned forward again and kissed her tears away.  “And if you’re feeling sad, please, let yourself feel sad.  Don’t worry about me.  I’ll survive.”

Katniss wasn’t certain whether to believe him.  But he looked and sounded so sincere, and she decided to take him at his word for the moment. 

She slid her hand up along his broad chest and left it over his breastbone.  She could feel the steady and sure beat of his heart underneath her palm.  She curled her fingers slightly, lightly gripping the fabric of his t-shirt.

He grinned broadly at her.  For the first time since getting his diagnosis, his smile reached his eyes, which twinkled at her in the moonlight streaming in from their open window.

She wouldn’t have thought it possible when they were first married.  But eight years later, twenty-seven-year-old Peeta Mellark was more handsome than ever. 

It took her breath away sometimes, the very sight of him. 

Operating on pure instinct, Katniss closed the small distance between them and kissed him very lightly.  First on one corner of his mouth.  Then the other.

As though an electrical circuit had been tripped in his body at the gentle touch of her lips, Peeta quickly snaked his strong arms around her body and pulled her to him tightly.

That was all the encouragement Katniss needed.  She reached down and, with a bit of difficulty, given how closely their bodies were pressed together, peeled Peeta’s shirt off.  She tossed it onto the floor beside their bed.

“Is this ok?” she asked him tentatively.

He answered her by slipping his tongue inside her mouth and tangling it needfully with her own. 

Many of their earliest couplings had been like this; born as much out of a burning need to forget for a few blissful moments as they were out of passion.  As Peeta tore Katniss’ own clothes off and feverishly kissed down her body she was reminded irresistibly of the boy Peeta had been in those early days.  And how insatiable they’d both been, then, for sex and comfort.

But then she felt Peeta’s tongue tracing lazy circles against her stomach, inching lower and lower until it brushed up against the edge of her underwear.  As she sucked in a breath, Peeta yanked them indelicately from her body. 

And then all thought fled.

“I love you so much, Katniss,” Peeta said brokenly against her bare thigh, before bending to her center and teasing her apart with his mouth.

When the tip of his tongue pressed firmly against her clit Katniss groaned.  Loudly.  She couldn’t help it.  Peeta was _so good_ at this.  Through years of practice he knew when to speed up, the exact amount of pressure to apply – and when to hold himself back and tease her with agonizingly slow licks that had her panting and begging him for release.

And it worked.  As Peeta made love to her with his mouth, deliberately and expertly, and as she bucked up against his face, her body’s movements completely outside her control, she was soon so far gone she couldn’t remember her own name, let alone what they’d been discussing not ten minutes earlier.

Katniss’ orgasm came upon her like a tidal wave; unexpectedly, and with so much force she had to bite down on the hand that wasn’t twisted in Peeta’s hair to keep from screaming.

Wasting no time – before the aftershocks of Katniss’ release had even finished coursing through her body – and with a loud whine, Peeta climbed onto the bed.  As she lay boneless and panting beneath him, he hoisted her legs up onto his shoulders and pounded into her – relentlessly, forcefully, and inexorably – until at last he joined her in sweet, blissful oblivion.

He collapsed on the bed next to her in an unceremonious heap a moment later.  He laughed a little, breathlessly.

That night, wrapped up in each other’s arms, they enjoyed a dreamless sleep

* * *

 

They both woke very late the next morning.  The sun was already high overhead, and the room was sweltering. 

Katniss lifted her head a little and smiled at the sight before her.  She and Peeta were little more than a tangle of sweaty limbs and rumpled bed sheets.

“’Morning,” Peeta said, from the pillow next to hers, his voice throaty with sleep.

Katniss lay back down, resting her head on Peeta’s chest.  She nuzzled his shoulder and kissed the tip of his nose.

“It seems like another hot day,” she murmured into his shoulder.   “And I think I’ve gotten too late a start to go hunting.”

“Mmm,” Peeta said sleepily.  “That’s a shame.”

But he didn’t sound sorry at all.  He grinned wolfishly at her and waggled his eyebrows, confirming her suspicions.  She swatted at his shoulder, making him laugh.

“That’ll make two days without anything new for my store, Peeta,” Katniss chided.  “It’s bad for business.”

“Fine, fine,” Peeta conceded.  “Maybe go out in the early evening?  Don’t the deer sometimes come out then?”

“Sometimes,” Katniss conceded.  “If it cools off enough they sometimes will.  Maybe I’ll try that.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Peeta said.  “I should probably call the bakery, though.  Let them know I’m not dead or anything…”

Peeta slowly climbed out of bed, still naked from their activities the night before.  Katniss smiled to herself as she admired her husband’s backside, strong and muscular from the heavy lifting his work required of him.

“Peeta?” she asked as he walked over to his dresser, legs flexing as he moved. She loved the little dimple he had in his right buttock.  She wondered, briefly, if he even knew it was there.

“Hm?” he said absently as he pulled drawers open and took clothes out of them, seemingly at random.

“Should we maybe start taking things down in the nursery?” she asked, scratching the back of her neck.  “It seems like a waste of –“

“ _NO!”_ Peeta shouted, making Katniss jump.  He wheeled around and stared at her, his eyes bulging and his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.  “God, Katniss, _no_!”

Nobody said anything for a long moment after that.  The loud chirping of crickets from outside was the only noise in the room.

“Ok,” Katniss finally said, very quietly.  “I guess we can… we can…”  Peeta’s outburst took her completely by surprise.  She didn’t know what to say.

“Please,” Peeta begged her.  His voice was as forlorn as it had been that night three weeks ago, when he’d suggested she should have chosen Gale instead, and Katniss had to close her eyes against the fresh wave of pain that washed over her.  “Doctor Vagner said… he said he didn’t know if maybe… if someday…” Peeta trailed off.

“Peeta…” Katniss began.  “Look…”

“I’m just… not ready, okay?  Please,” Peeta said.  “Let’s… let’s just wait.”

Peeta walked towards her and kneeled before her on the floor.  He took her hands in his.

“Okay, Peeta,” she agreed.  She wasn’t certain this was a good idea.  She worried that keeping the nursery as it was might only serve as a constant reminder of their loss and their pain.

But Peeta looked and sounded so desperate.  She didn’t have the heart to fight him on this.

“We can wait,” she assured him.

"Thank you," he said, squeezing her hands in his, his voice suddenly very hoarse.  "Thank you, Katniss."


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the slight delay in this update. The excessive polar vortex-ish weather in my state, plus my starting a new job, have conspired to keep me from writing as quickly as I'd like these days.
> 
> Thanks to my ladies for pre-reading this for me and making sure it was legible before I posted. I couldn't write a single word without your support.
> 
> If you'd like to find me on tumblr, I'm there as jeeno2.

On the tenth anniversary of their toasting ceremony, over a romantic candle-lit dinner he’d prepared, Peeta proposed they start traveling more.

“We have friends all over the country,” he said, wistfully.  “I miss them.  Our assistants can run things at work for a couple of days, don’t you think?”

Katniss didn’t have to think long about the idea. “It would be nice to get away,” she agreed.  Between the stress that went with building, and running, two successful businesses, and the depression they still dealt with more often than they admitted to each other, it felt like they hadn’t left Twelve in years.

Not counting their medical trips to Three, each of which only further confirmed Dr. Vanger’s suspicions that Peeta’s condition was unlikely to improve – and which led the doctor to finally tell them, just a month previously, that fertility treatments without donor sperm would be pointless – it probably _had_ been years since they’d left Twelve.  

Twelve would always be home to both of them.  Neither could fathom living anywhere else.  But the district was also full of ghosts; more so, now, than ever before.  It wouldn’t hurt to leave those ghosts behind now and again and enjoy life, as best they could, somewhere else.  In a place that didn’t remind them constantly of what they’d lost and what they’d never have.

 _Hell_ , Katniss thought as they continued to sit together in companionable silence.   _It might even be good for us_.

And there was no reason for them not to travel.  Their assistants had been with them for years and could easily manage things on their own for a few days.  Between the income from their businesses and the reparations they still received from the Capitol every month they could easily afford it.

Katniss poured herself another glass of red wine imported from the new Capitol and swirled it around in her glass.  “Where should we go first?”

They talked it over some more, over dinner and then after, as they sat together on their front porch swing, Peeta’s arm around her shoulders.  He rocked them back and forth with his feet, very gently, just like he used to do when they first started living together.

Katniss smiled at the sweet reminder of their earliest, tentative days as a couple, and rested her head on Peeta’s broad shoulder.

“Why not Seven?” Peeta finally suggested.  “It’s been ages since we’ve seen Johanna.  And I love all the hiking out there.”

Peeta didn’t mention that of out of their motley little family of Victors – not counting Haymitch, of course – Jo was the only one who still didn’t have children.  And that that was, in truth, the most compelling reason to make her the first out-of-district friend they visited.

But Katniss knew that was part of his thinking all the same.

“It’s a great idea,” Katniss said, interlacing her fingers with Peeta’s.  She didn’t think she was ready to spend an entire weekend with young children, either.  Not yet, anyway.  Not even if they happened to be the children of fellow Victors.

Katniss rested their linked hands on her knee.  “Let’s call Johanna first thing tomorrow morning and tell her we’re coming to visit.”

* * *

 

On a whim, a few days before leaving for Seven they invited Haymitch to join them.  To their surprise, it didn’t take much to convince their old mentor to come.

“I don’t think he’s left Twelve in ten years,” Peeta mentioned to Katniss the night before they left.  “It’ll be good for him to get out too.  Even if he’ll never admit it.”

As if to prove the truth of Peeta’s words, Haymitch was already packed and waiting for them on their front porch, hours before either Katniss or Peeta were ready to go, the day of their departure.

“My stupid geese can fend for themselves for a while,” Haymitch said gruffly as they walked to the train station together.  Peeta snorted audibly and tried to play it off as a cough.   They both knew that Haymitch had arranged with Hazelle to feed his geese twice per day in his absence.  Hazelle told them so herself over dinner just the night before, a wry smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“To tell you the honest truth it would be just as well if they ate each other while I’m gone,” Haymitch continued, as Katniss tried to hide the smile spreading across her face in her palm.  

Haymitch was getting older now – just as they all were – and more set in his ways than ever before, if that was even possible.  Katniss doubted very much that he would ever intentionally give up the façade of not caring about anyone but himself.

But as the years went on, Haymitch was doing a worse and worse job of convincing anyone that it was the truth.

* * *

 

The forests of Seven, while sprawling and very beautiful, had little else in common with those of Twelve.

They smelled different.  Rather than the sweet, slightly cloying scent of maple and oak that Katniss knew about as well as anything else in the world, Seven’s forests smelled strongly of pine.

But it didn’t matter.  Regardless of where she was, if Katniss was among trees, it always felt like home.

“Let’s dine _al fresco_ tonight,” Johanna suggested their first night at her house – a slightly smaller version of the Victor’s Village houses in Twelve, but otherwise more or less identical to their own.

Johanna made the suggestion with an odd tone in her voice Katniss hadn’t heard her use before and couldn’t quite identify.  Perhaps Jo sensed, as she suspected Haymitch already had, that Katniss and Peeta came here as much because they were looking for an escape as for any reason specifically having to do with either her or Seven.

Either way, Katniss smiled broadly at the suggestion.  “That would be great,” she said, already imagining  how their dinner might taste on Johanna’s patio, among trees that were at once different and very familiar.

She turned to look at Peeta, still smiling.  Seeing her face, Peeta broke into a small smile of his own and squeezed her hand.

* * *

 

It was obvious to both of them that the past eight years had been good to Johanna.

She was a consummate hostess.  Every morning after breakfast she took them on long, guided walks through the woods surrounding her home.  There was little left of the Johanna they’d gotten to know so well in the Quell and in Thirteen – the brash, highly-strung, gaunt young woman who jumped at loud noises, bathed as infrequently as she could, and slept with two knives under her pillow.

In that very damaged young woman’s place was now a much calmer, quieter person with softer curves – and no noticeable dark circles under her eyes at all.

But at core she was still the same Johanna.

“I still sleep with knives, Mellark,” she said sarcastically when, on one of their morning walks, Peeta told her she was looking well.  “In fact, these days I sleep with _three_ of them.”

Katniss rolled her eyes at Jo’s comment.  She hadn’t done an official survey, but if she and Peeta were any indication she was fairly certain _all_ the surviving Victors slept with a weapon close at hand.

“But, yeah. I’m… better,” Johanna eventually admitted, so quietly Katniss almost missed it over the soft babbling of a nearby stream.  “Better than I’ve been in about twenty years.”

Johanna didn’t provide further explanation.  Katniss left it alone, knowing that if Jo wanted them to know more she’d offer it herself.  Peeta opened his mouth, clearly about to ask for clarification, but Katniss grabbed his arm and shook her head, signaling him to stay quiet.

“Time has a way of healing most things, doesn’t it,” Haymitch said, loudly and unexpectedly, from behind them.  Katniss jumped in surprise at the sound of his voice.  He hadn’t joined them on any of their other walks during this visit, and when they left the house this morning he’d been soundly asleep.

“That it does,” Johanna agreed, nodding.  Haymitch sat down next to them on the grass and she laughed a little.  “Who’d have ever thought, huh?”

Katniss couldn’t help but agree.  At least in part.  She didn’t really believe that time altogether _fixed_ anything.  But time really did help, or so it had done for her, and she said as much.

Peeta, however, said nothing.  He walked a few feet away from the rest of the group and sat down by a wild blackberry bush, stretching out his limbs like a cat.  He gave a mighty yawn, his face bathed in the light of a sunbeam that just barely filtered down through the forest canopy overhead.

He lay down on the ground and folded his arms across his chest.  And then abruptly changed the subject, telling them all about how business had been lately back in Twelve.

* * *

 

They’d originally only planned to stay with Johanna for three days.  Just long enough to get some real time away.   

But they enjoyed their visit so much that the night before their scheduled departure they decided to stay a full week.

The decision made, Katniss and Peeta called their assistants in Twelve (while Haymitch surreptitiously called Hazelle).  Everything was apparently functioning just fine at home without them.  Reassured, they then called Seven’s train station and changed the departure date on their return tickets.

Spending time in Seven with Haymitch and Johanna had been far more peaceful and restorative – for both of them – than Katniss had expected when they first decided to come here.  Much more so than any session she’d ever had with Dr. Aurelius.

She wasn’t quite certain why that was.

It’s not like they talked about their problems on this trip.  At all.  On the contrary: most of their meals, whether taken outside on Johanna’s porch or in her dining room, were practically silent affairs.  So were their daily walks.  Most evenings they sat around Johanna’s fireplace and talked until late into the night, but never about anything of substance.

It all suited Katniss, who was never much for talking anyway, just fine.  And to her surprise the quiet here seemed to suit Peeta too.

In the end, Katniss decided that spending time with the only other people they knew who were just as damaged as they were – the only people who could in any way relate to their deep and all-consuming feelings of loss and hopelessness – must be what was responsible for the relative serenity that found them on this trip.

When, at last, it was time for them to leave, Johanna walked them to the station and embraced them each in turn.  Haymitch placed a sloppy, theatrical kiss on Johanna’s cheek, making everyone laugh and earning him a punch in the arm from Jo.

“We’ll do this every year,” Peeta promised before they boarded the train bound for home.

“You better,” Johanna shouted as she waved goodbye.

* * *

 

By the next year they were taking out-of-district vacations every six months.

At first they didn’t limit their trips to District Seven.  They visited Annie and Dylan – and Kevan, the man who Annie swore was just a friend, but who couldn’t keep his eyes off Annie and who treated Dylan like any man would treat his own son. They made a few trips to see Beetee and his young family in Three.

(Katniss also proposed, just once, that they visit Two.  “I haven’t seen Gale in years,” she’d said, very quietly.  Peeta, who ordinarily seemed incapable of denying her anything she wanted, shot down the idea immediately.  “Two just brings back shiny memories,” he’d said in a gruff, dismissive voice that hardly sounded like him at all.  Katniss cringed inwardly at how foolish she’d been in suggesting it in the first place and dropped the subject.)

Eventually, however, they stopped vacationing anywhere but Seven.

The horrible shared experiences of the Games and the Rebellion would always bind them to Annie and Beetee in a way they found difficult to explain to anyone who hadn’t endured those events with them.  But there was also an undeniable rift, now, between Katniss and Peeta and most of their fellow Victors.  

The rift resurfaced every single time Dylan called Annie _mother,_ and every time Beetee’s wife nursed their young son in front of them at the dinner table.  And it was an unexpected, and therefore particularly wrenching, kind of loss all in its own.

On what would become their last visit to Three for many years, Peeta admitted to Katniss, during a private moment, that he found spending time with Beetee’s young children just as painful as any visit to Delly’s bustling household.  “And… whenever I come to Three, now, all I can think of is Dr. Vanger’s office,” he’d added, looking pained.

Katniss threw her arms around him at his admission and hugged him tight.  These trips were supposed to be good for them.  They were supposed to give them something positive to look forward to and remind them of the good in their lives.  If they only caused Peeta pain…

“I hate that I feel this way about seeing our old friends,” he murmured into Katniss’ ear.  “But… can we just visit Johanna on our vacations from now on?”

His voice in her ear was pleading, but very quiet.  She could hardly hear him over the din of Beetee’s family in the adjoining room.  “Please?” he added, when at first she didn’t respond.  “At least for now?”

Katniss pressed a gentle kiss to his neck.  If this was what he needed…

“Of course,” she agreed.  “After this, let’s just visit Jo on our trips.”

* * *

 

On an unseasonably cold fall evening in the middle of their fifteenth year of marriage, Katniss came home from work to find Peeta on their living room sofa, engrossed in something on the telescreen.

This was not unusual.  Given that he normally opened the bakery hours before she opened her store she was well used to being the last one to arrive home.

“Hi,” she called out to him from the hallway.  She walked towards the small bathroom off the hall to wash her hands, something she always did right after work.

“Come here when you have a minute,” Peeta said, his voice strange.

“Sure,” Katniss replied, drying her hands on the soft green towel that hung from the rack next to the bathroom sink.  She crossed the hall and walked up behind him.  His attention was so focused on the screen that he didn’t look up at her or otherwise acknowledge she’d entered the room until she put her hands on his shoulders.

He covered them with his much larger hands, but his eyes were still fixed on the screen.

“What are we watching?” Katniss asked.

It was a propo; that part she could tell immediately.  Even though two different presidents had come and gone since the days when Snow was in power, for reasons that escaped her the government still used the same too-bright lighting in propos that it did in the days when she was the Mockingjay.

Katniss could probably identify a government propo in her sleep.

“Why are we watching this?“ Katniss asked.  She wasn’t in the mood for a propo; she was tired from her day.

“Just watch it,” Peeta insisted, holding up a hand to cut her off.

The telescreen showed a hospital room in what the caption at the bottom of the screen said was District Eleven.  A nurse dressed all in white was taking a young woman – a Capitol reporter Katniss recognized from other recent propos – on a short guided tour.

But the room was very small and it wasn’t much of a tour.  The nurse pointed to a few pieces of furniture, and then finally a small baby crib in the center of the room, which the camera then zoomed in on.

The crib was empty except for a folded blue blanket at one end and a stuffed toy dog.

“The baby who was in this crib went home with his new family an hour ago,” the nurse, now off camera, told the reporter, as the camera panned around the room.  Katniss saw brightly-colored balloons suspended from the ceiling and a handful of little toys lining the room’s shelves.  “And thank goodness for that,” the nurse continued earnestly.  “We’re running out of space here.”

Katniss wasn’t certain what, exactly, they were watching.  She walked around the couch, very slowly, and sat down next to Peeta.  Glancing up at his face, she saw that his eyes were welling with tears.

“What would you like to tell the people of Panem, all of whom are watching right now and are absolutely heartbroken?” the reporter asked the nurse.

The nurse gave the reporter a nod, then looked straight at the camera before continuing.

“I can’t speak for what’s happening in other Districts,” the nurse said, in a tone of voice that immediately told Katniss she was reading directly from off-screen cue cards.  “But here in District Eleven, our population has… stabilized, beyond even former President Paylor’s wildest dreams.”

“And why does that present a problem?” the reporter asked, concern – or at least, a reasonably convincing simulation of it – lacing her tone.

“It doesn’t,” the nurse said, much less convincingly.  “The people of District Eleven have done what the former President, and her successors, asked of them.  They’ve built their families.  It’s just that…” The nurse closed her eyes, then, and shook her head.  “It’s just that sometimes, now…” The nurse trailed off again, biting her lip theatrically.

Katniss rolled her eyes.  She couldn’t help it.  Her time as the Mockingjay meant she knew propo acting like she knew how to breathe, even after all these years.

“Yes?” the reporter prompted gently.

The nurse opened her eyes and looked right at the reporter.  “It’s just that now, sometimes… our citizens are having babies they cannot afford to keep.”  She closed her eyes again.  “And so sometimes they abandon them to our care, in the hopes that their babies will have a better life somewhere else.”

Katniss was stunned at this admission.

During her childhood, lots of Seam families had children they couldn’t afford.  It was practically the norm, really -- especially in the years following the mine explosion that killed so many of District Twelve’s able-bodied men.  

When things got really bad, sometimes the poorest families would give up some, or even all, of their children.  Without exception, those children eventually found their way to the ramshackle orphanage at the edge of District Twelve.  After all, in those days, people were far too preoccupied with simply making sure their own family had enough to eat to take in extra unwanted children.

Katniss grew up hearing horror stories about what happened to abandoned children at District Twelve’s orphanage.  As she toured the country as the Mockingjay, she heard similar stories, told in hushed whispers, from people in Eight,  Nine, Eleven.  But a few years after the Rebellion, President Paylor ordered all of Panem’s orphanages torn down.  Now that the country had rebuilt and Snow and his government were long gone,  no family anywhere in Panem – including the outer districts – was ever supposed to be in such dire straights that abandoning a child was its only choice.

Things had improved so much in Twelve in such a short period of time that Katniss had taken President Paylor’s assurances at face value.  Katniss couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing right now.

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell the viewers at home?” the reporter asked, very gently.

The nurse looked directly at the camera again.  She squared her shoulders, and Katniss knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was done with the cue cards.

“Yes,” she said.  “If anyone watching this at home would be willing to open their hearts and their homes to a little one who has no one else in the world to take care of them, please:  call us right away.”

A six-digit number flashed across on the bottom of the screen.  The phone number for District Eleven’s hospital, presumably.

The propo ended shortly after that.  The network immediately switched over to Plutarch Heavensbee’s new program – a strange show that featured celebrities chatting with ordinary citizens and sobbing with them on-camera.

Neither of them cared for this program, and Peeta shut off the telescreen without a word.  They sat together in silence for a very long moment, the only sound in the room coming from the whir of whatever Peeta happened to have going in the kitchen for dinner.

But Peeta didn’t need to say anything for Katniss to know exactly what he was thinking right now.

“Peeta…” she began, and then trailed off.  Could they really _do_ what she knew he was about to propose?

“Katniss,” he said, very quietly.  “Would you consider it?”

Katniss buried her face in her hands.

She still wanted a baby, of course.  Even years after Peeta’s diagnosis, the idea of parenting a child created from their love was something that kept her up many nights with anguish and want.

But the baby she’d always imagined raising was a baby she’d have with _P_ e _eta_.  Taking another person’s child into their home and raising it as their own was not something that had ever occurred to her as something they might do.  Or even something they _could_ do.

Until ten minutes ago she didn’t even know something like this was ever done.

Was it even possible to love a child another woman gave birth to, who you met for the very first time in a sterile hospital miles away from your home, the way you were supposed to?  In the way a mother was supposed to love her child?

And yet, the idea of being a mother… of Peeta finally being the father he was always destined to be…

It was thrilling.  

Katniss raised her face from her hands, more conflicted about this than she’d been about anything since before the day she finally realized she was in love with Peeta Mellark.

“We could finally be parents…” Peeta whispered hoarsely.  The desperation she heard in his voice broke her heart.  “We could help a baby who needs a home, and a family without the means to care for him.  I mean, I don’t know how widespread a problem this is, or how many babies are being abandoned, but… just… just please promise me you’ll think about it?”

She looked into Peeta’s bright blue eyes.  The eyes she loved, so full of pain and of hope all at once.

Thinking about it, at least, was something she knew she could do.

“Yes,” Katniss said earnestly.  “I’ll think about it.  I promise, Peeta.  I will.”


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little green  
> Like the color when the spring is born  
> There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow  
> Just a little green  
> Like the nights when the Northern Lights perform  
> There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes  
> And sometimes there’ll be sorrow
> 
> \- Joni Mitchell

Katniss cannot remember the last time that time itself had passed this slowly.

They’re in the fifth hour of their vigil in District Eleven’s hospital.  Katniss has been glancing up at the clock on the wall every few minutes ever since they arrived, willing the numbers to _move_.  Peeta has probably spent less than an hour of their time here in the chair next to hers, spending the rest of it up and pacing the small room, wringing his hands in front of him, more a bundle of nerves and kinetic energy right now than a person.

But he’s sitting next to her now.  Katniss sighs and stretches, shifting a little closer to him.  She rests her hand on Peeta’s leg, and that’s all it takes for him to start bouncing his knee up and down anxiously. 

“We’ve been here for hours,” he whines suddenly, breaking the near suffocating silence of this room.  In his impatience Peeta sounds every bit the sixteen-year-old boy he’d never really gotten the chance to be.  “When will they let us _see_ her?”

Peeta asks this as though she knows the answer.  “I don’t know,” Katniss says, because she doesn’t.  “They told us just one more hour about two hours ago.”  She forces herself to focus on staying calm for Peeta, because if she lets herself think about how anxious she is, too, she worries she’ll fly right out of her skin.

Without another word, Peeta’s out of his chair and pacing again – back and forth, back and forth, this time his hands clasped behind his back.  He’s moving so rapidly that Katniss briefly wonders if it’s possible for a person to wear out a carpet in an afternoon just from worry.

She considers asking him to sit, thinking that perhaps he’s calmer when he’s sitting.  But one look at his face tells her to leave it alone.

After what feels like another three hours – but which, according to the clock on the wall, is just another twenty minutes – a doctor enters the room.  She’s wearing the same drab green scrubs Katniss still associates with their time in Thirteen.  There’s a fleeting moment of panic, but Katniss tamps it down quickly, reminding herself of where they are and why they’re here.

“Mr. and Mrs. Mellark?” the doctor asks.  She’s looking at the chart in her hands, flipping pages.

Now Katniss jumps out of her chair.  “Yes,” she answers quickly.  She glances at Peeta, who’s running his hands through his hair like it’s the only thing tethering him to his sanity.

The doctor looks up at both of them and smiles.  “You can see her now.”

* * *

 

When Katniss told Peeta that she’d thought about it and, yes, she wanted to adopt a baby from another District, several thoughts passed through her mind more or less at once.

The first was that despite what she’d just said, she still wasn’t certain this was the right decision.  The misgivings she’d felt after watching the District Eleven propo had lessened a little over the past three months.  But they were still there.  Whenever she saw Delly with her chldren – each of whom was the spitting image of his father – and whenever they had dinner with Greasy Sae and her granddaughter, she was reminded that if they adopted a child it would look like neither of them.  

She still worried that if a child living with them had neither her grey eyes nor Peeta’s blonde hair, it would serve as a constant reminder that they were not his biological parents.  After months of thinking it over Katniss _thought_ she could love a child under these circumstances.  But she did not _know_ if she could.

The second thought she had was that Peeta had never looked happier. 

“Oh Katniss!” he shouted, the look of elation on his face mixed with very obvious shock.

She supposed she couldn’t blame him if he was surprised.

They hadn’t discussed adoption even once since that first night.  For his own part, Peeta was probably ready to board a train for District Eleven the moment that propo ended.  But he was still her Peeta, and he could sense that she wasn’t ready.  He didn’t push her to make up her mind, just like he never pushed her to do _anything_ she wasn’t ready for. 

And she knew he never would.

But when she told him, the feeling in the kitchen was just so homey, with him at the stove in his apron and her sorting the mail, and the words were out of her mouth almost before she’d realized she said them.  And then he was running towards her and lifting her out of her chair and kissing her everywhere, and she knew she couldn’t take it back.

As she kissed him back with all the love she felt for him in her heart, he smiled against her lips.

“I’ll call District Eleven right after dinner,” he murmured, kissing her again. 

She realized, suddenly, that this meant they would be parents soon, parents _at last_ , and she pulled him to her more closely, her heart pounding in her chest.

* * *

 

But Peeta couldn’t wait until after dinner.

After pulling away from her, he leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes.

“Are you very hungry?” he asked, his voice trembling.  That’s not what he was really asking her, though.

“Go on,” Katniss said, smiling.  She gave him another chaste, affectionate peck on the lips.  “Call them.  I’ll wait.”

Peeta was out of the room, the phone’s receiver pressed firmly against his ear and his fingers furiously punching numbers on the dial, before she’d even taken her seat at the kitchen table.

“This is Peeta Mellark,” he’d said, to whomever answered the phone at the other end.  No further identification was necessary of course.  Everybody knew who he was; even people who hadn’t been born yet during their Games.  “I’m calling about a propo Katniss and I saw a few months ago.”

* * *

 

The propo hadn’t said how many babies were being abandoned in Eleven.  It also hadn’t said whether this was happening in other Districts.

They soon found out.

“She was crying,” Peeta told Katniss after the short phone call was over.  He returned the phone’s receiver to its jack as he quickly jotted something down on a small scrap of paper.  “She kept thanking me over and over again for calling, saying how glad she was that I called.”

Without another word he picked the receiver up again and began punching in numbers on the dial, reading from the paper he’d written on a moment ago.

“Who are you calling now?” Katniss asked.

“The hospital in District Ten,” he replied, his voice unsteady.  “The nurse in Eleven asked me to.”

Katniss pressed her lips together tightly.  As exciting a moment as this was for both of them, personally, all she could think was that Paylor and her government had misled them after all.  Clearly, the good fortune Twelve had had in recent years was not being enjoyed throughout Panem.

As Peeta spoke to whomever answered the phone at this second hospital, identifying himself and explaining why he was calling, Katniss watched him.  The person talking to him in District Ten was speaking very loudly and rapidly.  Even all the way from the kitchen Katniss could almost, but not quite, make out what she was saying.

After a few minutes Peeta once again scrambled for a pen and jotted something down on another piece of paper.

“Okay,” he said at last, nodding.  “Thank you.”

Katniss could hear the person click off and the phone go dead.  But it was another very long moment before Peeta slowly replaced the phone and turned to face her.

“I guess now we wait?” he said, shrugging his shoulders, his tone of voice rising at the end of his sentence like he was asking a question.

“I guess now we wait,” she guessed.  If there was more concrete information to be had, Katniss figured whoever Peeta just spoke with would have shared it.

She walked over to Peeta, still standing by the phone and looking more than a little lost.  She took his hands in hers.  They were shaking badly.  She gave them what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze.

“Let’s eat,” she suggested quietly, trying to keep the tremor out of her own voice so she could appear strong for him.

Nodding silently, Peeta let her to lead him back into the kitchen where dinner was waiting on the stove.

* * *

 

In the end they only had to wait two weeks.

During those two weeks Katniss managed to almost convince herself that neither hospital would ever contact them and that life would continue on forever, just the two of them, as it had for the past fifteen years.  Peeta taught Katniss how to hope and how to dream again after the Games and the rebellion.  But even after all this time, if there was one thing Katniss was good at it was building protective walls around herself. 

Hoping for a child was just too painful and dangerous a thing to contemplate – even despite both hospitals’ assurances that children were being relinquished to their care every single month – after everything they’d been through.

And so when Peeta burst into the nursery to tell her that _their baby was here_ , it took Katniss entirely by surprise. 

“What – _what_ –“ she spluttered, her jaw slack with shock.  She dropped the cloth she’d been using to dust the furniture but she paid it no mind.

Peeta was nodding vigorously.

“You heard me,” he said, running his hands through his hair anxiously.  “She’s here.   _Our daughter_.  Or, not our daughter,” he corrected himself quickly.  “Not yet anyway.  But she’s just been born and she was abandoned at District Eleven’s hospital and they can’t find her parents and the head nurse there just called me and asked if –“

Peeta leaned back against the wall for support.  He closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands.

“Katniss,” he moaned.  “Oh, god.”

Katniss walked over to him and cradled his face in her hands, waiting for him to tell her the rest of it, not certain if she could bear to hear the rest of it.

“But,” he finally said from behind.  “She told me we can’t meet her baby just yet.”

“Why not?” Katniss asked.

"She was born with a slight fever," Peeta said.  He extracted himself from Katniss’ arms and began pacing the small nursery.  "It was a difficult birth, they said.  I don’t know what the hell that means," he said, gesturing widely.  He stopped pacing, suddenly, and grabbed at his hair with both fists.  "And that’s all they told me.  I don’t know if she’s scared, if she’s suffering, if she’s _crying_ —”

Katniss cut him off by grabbing him and kissing him, hard, on the lips.  She gently pried his fists from his hair and lowered them, holding his hands in hers and caressing their backs with her thumbs.

Once she could feel his body relax slightly she pulled away and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"Did the nurse say when we _can_ meet her?" she prompted.

Peeta nodded.  ”Yeah,” he said, his voice unsteady.  He looked her in the eye and swallowed audibly.  “In three days.”

Katniss sank to her knees without realizing it.  A million conflicting, disparate thoughts ran through her head, but she couldn’t move.  She needed Peeta’s help to stand up, and as he pulled her into his arms she began to shake and sob incoherently.

* * *

 

After five of the longest hours of their lives, the District Eleven doctor finally, _finally_ leads them out of the hospital’s waiting room.

Katniss and Peeta follow closely behind her, clutching at each other’s hands.  To Katniss’ immense relief the doctor moves quickly down the dimly-lit corridor, as though she understands their desperate need.  The doctor’s shoes click noisily against the beige tiled floor as she walks, but Katniss can barely hear it over her pounding heart.   

At length, they arrive to a closed door at the far end of the hall.  The doctor opens it slowly and then disappears into the room.  She doesn’t indicate whether Katniss and Peeta are to follow her.  Not knowing what to do, they hang back in the hallway, Peeta gripping Katniss’ arm like a lifeline.

A moment later the doctor pokes her head out of the room again.  She’s beaming at them. 

“You can come in now,” she says, still smiling.

The doctor opens the door a little wider and that’s all the invitation Peeta needs.  He practically knocks the doctor over in his haste to get into the room, which makes the doctor laugh.  His unabashed enthusiasm would have made Katniss laugh too in any other situation. 

By the time Katniss walks inside, Peeta is already kneeling on the ground by a bassinet that takes up most of the room, his face pressed against the glass. His body obscures Katniss’ vision of what – or who – is inside. 

"Hi," Peeta says quietly, almost shyly.  Not to her; to the bassinet.  His back is to Katniss and she cannot see his face.  But she doesn’t need to see his face to know that the tears gathering in her own eyes right now are likely mirrored in his.

"I'm your daddy, and…" His voice cracks on the word _daddy_ , and Katniss' heart clenches painfully inside her chest. 

"I'm your daddy," Peeta continues. Stronger this time. "I've waited so very long to meet you."

Katniss walks further into the room and kneels next to Peeta, leaning against him a little for support.  She looks into the bassinet, which is enclosed. 

Katniss is about to ask the doctor – still lingering by the door – if the baby is still too sick to be exposed to room air, or if there is some other reason for the enclosed bassinet.  But the words die in her throat at the sight of the sleeping baby girl, lying less than two inches away, separated from them only by a thin sheet of glass. 

 _She’s so tiny._  

Katniss has seen babies before, of course.  But never one that was quite so _new_.  The baby is practically swimming in the little outfit she’s wearing: a pink onesie stamped with “District Eleven” in large black letters.  Katniss thinks of the tiny dress she brought from home and realizes, feeling foolish, that it’ll be months before this baby is big enough to wear it. 

The baby opens her eyes a little and Katniss’ breath catches.  There is something about the girl – the shape of her eyes, perhaps; or maybe the tone of her skin – that reminds Katniss, suddenly and irresistibly, of Rue.  But the baby’s eyes are unfocused and she doesn’t look at either of them.  She purses her tiny pink lips and makes a little noise in the back of her throat before wriggling her legs a little and falling back to sleep. 

“Can we hold her?” Peeta asks, his words coming out in a tumble, his voice thick with emotion.  He hasn’t taken his eyes off the baby since they entered the room.  “Please?”  It sounds like begging.

“Oh!  Of course,” the doctor says, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to her before now.  “Here.  Let me open the bassinet for you.  There’s kind of a trick to it.”

 The doctor walks to one end of the bassinet and pushes a series of buttons.  With a quiet hiss, the lid swings open and then there’s nothing in the world separating them from this tiny little person.

“Go on,” the doctor says, encouragingly, nodding towards the baby.  Katniss glances at the doctor.  She’s surprised to see there are tears in the doctor’s eyes too.

By the time Katniss’ looks back to the bassinet the baby is no longer there.  She looks over to Peeta, who’s now standing up, holding the baby girl in his outstretched arms with tears streaming down his face.

“Katniss,” Peeta says quietly, his voice utterly broken now.  “Oh, Katniss…”

He brings the baby towards him and slowly, slowly, cradles her to his chest.  He wraps his arms around her snugly and rests his head gently against the top of her head. 

The baby kicks her legs a little and burrows into Peeta’s chest, sighing contentedly.  She says something – or tries to, anyway; it’s really just babble – and then grows quiet and still in Peeta’s arms.  She must have fallen asleep again.  Peeta rests his cheek against the top of her head and his eyes flutter closed.

“I’ll leave you three alone now,” the doctor says quietly, sounding reluctant to disrupt this tender moment with even those few words.

“Wait,” Katniss says, turning towards the doctor.  “Before you go.  Is she… is she ok?” she asks.  “Healthy, I mean?  We weren’t allowed to see her for hours, and the bassinet was closed…”

The doctor nods and flips through the chart she was looking at earlier.  “She had a slight infection when she was brought here.  And a fever.”  She closes the chart and looks at Katniss.  “But we gave her antibiotics and it cleared up after a few hours.  The closed bassinet was just a precaution.”  The doctor smiles at Katniss again.  “One that’s no longer needed.”

Katniss swallows the lump in her throat.  “So we can… take her home?” she asks, very quietly.  The thought of bringing this tiny bundle on the train back to Twelve with them fills Katniss with an indescribable mixture of elation and terror.

“Yes,” the doctor says.  “When you’re ready to leave, just come find us at the front desk.  There are papers you’ll need to sign.  And then she’s all yours.” 

 _All ours_. 

Without another word, the doctor leaves the room and closes the door behind her.

Katniss turns to face Peeta again.  His eyes are still closed and he’s begun rocking back and forth a little, humming tunelessly under his breath.

Tentatively, Katniss walks over to her husband and the baby he’s cradling in his arms.  With her fingertips she gently caresses the girl’s arm.  She runs her hands through the wispy hair on top of her tiny head.  She touches the baby’s cheek, her skin so soft it almost makes Katniss gasp in shock. 

A moment later, she’s in Katniss’ arms.  _She’s so warm_. _And so_ tiny _. Oh, god…_

“I love you,” Peeta murmurs.  Katniss doesn’t have to ask; she knows he’s saying it to both of them.  He wraps the two of them up in his arms and Katniss instinctively leans her head against his chest.

“Let’s go home,” he murmurs into her ear, and the baby sighs against her neck, and Katniss has never felt more whole.

The three of them walk together down the short hallway – slowly, and very quietly, so as not to wake the baby.  Peeta fills out the necessary paperwork as quickly as he can while Katniss cradles their sleeping daughter in her arms.

Katniss counts her sleepy little breaths – each inhale and exhale – barely realizing she’s doing it, her heart full to bursting with joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is for A., who cannot read yet -- but who gets this dedication all the same.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading. Just an epilogue left to go. :)


	7. Epilogue

It takes their little party of four much longer to reach the water’s edge than it used to when it was just the two of them.

Of course, if it had been up to six-year-old Rose, they’d have gotten here _ages_ ago.

“Come _on_!” she whines once they finally arrive, shifting her weight impatiently from foot to foot. 

Katniss lays their blanket on the sand for their impromptu picnic, biting the inside of her cheek to try and hide the smile on her face.  Her daughter’s innocent enthusiasm for swimming reminds Katniss irresistibly of her own childhood trips to this lake with her father.

“Almost ready to go,” Peeta calls out to Rose as he kneels in front of little Jack, fidgeting inside his bulky swimming jacket.  Jack hates wearing it, but he also can’t swim yet.  And there’s no way they’d let him in that lake without it. 

Peeta rummages around in Katniss’ bag for the sun cream and begins applying it thickly on Jack’s pale, freckled back.  Jack has the same flaming red hair and fair complexion that’s common in District Ten, and Peeta takes protecting him from the hot summer sun very seriously.  Like a sacred moral obligation.

“Okay,” Peeta finally says, nodding to himself, as he slowly spins Jack around and examines his handiwork.  “You two go on and have fun.  Lunch in about twenty minutes.”

“Bye-bye Dada!” Jack squeals, waving his chubby little hand at Peeta before toddling off to join his sister by the water’s edge.

Peeta stands up and stretches his back, watching as their two children wade into the lake: Rose, fearlessly; and Jack, much more cautiously, his eyes fixed on his sister’s retreating form as his little legs make big splashes in the water

“I think she takes after you,” Peeta says after a very long moment.  Katniss turns her head towards her husband.  The late summer sun is behind him and she needs to squint to see his face.  “She isn’t afraid of anything.  I mean, look at her.”

Katniss does.  Rose – only having learned how to swim last summer herself – is showing off for her younger brother, doing handstands in water nearly as deep as she is tall.

“I wouldn’t say I’m not afraid of _anything_ ,” Katniss says, another smile playing at the corner of her mouth.  “But I’ll admit she does remind me a bit of… well.  Me.”

Peeta sits down next to Katniss on the blanket, tucking his legs underneath him and pulling her into his side.  She leans her head on his broad shoulder and closes her eyes.  He smells a combination of summer, sweat, and sun cream, and she sighs, not certain she’s ever been more content than she is in this moment.

Peeta starts talking to her about their weekend plans.  Haymitch will be over in a few hours to help them prepare for everything, he reminds her.  And Johanna arrives tonight, which is a relief.  As much as all of their fellow Victors will always feel like family, their house is perpetually a wreck now that they share it with a six and a three-year-old, and between the two of them they rarely have more than an odd free hour or two now and again.

They’d never be able to host everyone, and their families, for three entire days without help.

“Let’s not talk about the weekend just yet,” Katniss eventually interrupts, her head still resting on Peeta’s shoulder.  “It’s nice… being here right now.  Let’s just try and relax a little before the onslaught.”

Peeta laughs at her choice of words.  “All right,” he says.  He presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head and sighs.

Katniss opens her eyes and watches as Jack runs towards Rose in the water.  She’s a strong girl for her age, and with the added buoyancy water provides she’s able to pick him up easily.  She swings him around and around in the water, both of them shrieking with happiness.

Katniss’ life doesn’t look anything like what she’d imagined for herself when she was a girl, on those rare instances when she allowed herself to imagine her future.  Herself, a wife and mother.  Part of a family thrown together through circumstance and bound together, tightly and forever, by love.   

She takes Peeta’s hand in hers and presses a gentle kiss to the back of it.  He squeezes her hand and hums a little, happily.

There is no doubt in her mind that all of this is real.  She laughs in spite of herself, her heart full and her mind, at long last, at peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading. :)
> 
> If you'd like to find me on tumblr, I'm there as jeeno2.


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